90 sLAde goRton: A hALf centuRy in poLitics
entering a new era in fits and starts. The Post-Intelligencer huffed in an
editorial that Bayley was treating church and charity bingo “as though it
were a capital crime wave.” Uhlman, mindful of a new rival, said Bayley
was “creating a tempest in a teapot.”^23
Nor was the war on gambling a winner for Gorton. The bingo ladies
hated him “and ultimately the people amended the Constitution to allow
lotteries, so now there was more gambling than there ever was before,” he
notes. When the tribes achieved compacts to open casinos that grew more
Vegas-like with every passing year, the Knights of Columbus and card-
room operators from Anacortes to Zillah yowled. Ironies were every-
where. In 1969, Attorney General Gorton never imagined that 31 years
later contributions from professional gambling interests would help the
tribes defeat him in a bid for re-election to the United States Senate.
As for the state lottery, which most voters erroneously believed would
be just the ticket to fund education, Gorton denounces it as “a horrendous
tax on the poor. I’ve never bought a lottery ticket in my life, and never
will. With each one of these events, legalized gambling has just gotten
more extensive. That was one of my crusades that didn’t work.”
goonLARt unched AnotheR cRusAde a day after the 1971 session, which
he denounced as short-sighted and unproductive. The lawmakers had
failed to update the criminal code, dropped the ball on consumer protec-
tion measures he championed and balked at regulating campaign expense
reporting. In a speech to the Seattle-King County Bar Association, Gorton
unveiled a sweeping package of proposals to reform the “archaic” legisla-
tive system through a series of initiatives and a constitutional convention.^24
The blockbusters were reducing the number of legislators from 148 to 84
and term-limiting legislators and statewide elected officials to 12 consecu-
tive years. He also advocated restricting the Legislature’s prerogatives to set
its own rules by transferring part of that power to the electorate through
the initiative process. Further, he called for open meetings, with recorded
votes, as well as precise reporting and policing of campaign contributions
and expenditures. Lobbyists would be subject to tighter registration and
their campaign contributions and other gifts would be tightly monitored.
Finally, speaking from the experience of trench warfare, he advocated
handing the task of redistricting to a bipartisan body. The 1970 Census
having plopped the issue back in the lap of the Legislature, Senator Greive
had indignantly charged that his old adversary—now ensconced at the
Temple of Justice—was using computer data and in-house facilities to
assist the Republican caucuses.